This Harper’s Bazaar UK photoshoot with Sienna Miller is maybe one of the funniest editorials I’ve ever seen. I think it’s the combination of Sienna – who will always be a party-girl to me – and the cheeseball doves and white, virginal lace. Like, Bazaar UK is really, really trying to sell us the idea that Sienna has changed. She’s changed so much she’s like a sweet woman-child who plays with doves. She is INNOCENT! For whatever record, I do think Sienna has “grown up” a lot over the past few years, but I also think she’s really pushing a whitewashed narrative on herself and to the media. And just my opinion, but it’s coming across as cheesy and fake. Anyway, Sienna covers the April issue of Bazaar UK to promote her supporting role in The Lost City of Z. You can read the profile here. Some highlights:
Moving to New York last year: “I just like the idea that you come to New York and you do something. I just felt like it was so easy and all my friends are there [in London], and we’d probably drink too much wine and go to the country for the weekend. It was all gorgeous and great, but I’m really trying to kick myself up the ass in some way, and New York is very good at doing that.”
Her romantic entanglements overshadowing her work: “I was a fashionable girlfriend before I was an actor. And then, I think, without enough sense of self to really hold onto whoever I might actually be, I just sort of drifted… I was a 23-year-old, and was rebellious. I’m inherently a little bit rebellious. I wasn’t just going to hide away, so I fought back, and that perpetuated it. It was a vicious cycle and it started to feed itself.”
Co-parenting with her ex-partner Tom Sturridge: “We still love each other. I think in a break-up somebody has to be a little bit cruel in order for it to be traditional, but it’s not been acrimonious in a way where you would choose to not be around that person. We don’t live together, as has been reported recently, but we do half the time. Everybody will stay over or we’ll all go on holiday and that’s because we genuinely want to be around each other. It’s great for our daughter that she has two parents who love each other and are friends. He’s definitely my best friend in the entire world.’
She doesn’t want to play “the wife” roles: “The one thing I was determined on was never to ask for pity, no matter how pitiful,’ she says. When she first met with Gray in London, she told him: ‘I’d like to do your film, but first, I’m not going to play “the wife”.’
Something nice: I do think it says a lot that she and Tom Sturridge are doing no-drama co-parenting. I never hear anything about them fighting or disagreeing, and they’ve kept their business locked up tight. Which is great for them and great for their daughter. Something not so nice: Harper’s Bazaar UK makes a point of saying that the first thing Sienna wants to do, and seemingly the main crux of the interview which Sienna leads, is “correct the record” about her wild, misspent youth. While sure, she young when she first got with Jude Law, she was like 27 and 28 during her affair with Balthazaar Getty. She was completely and totally messy throughout her 20s, and now she’s trying to convince us that she’s totally different now, you guys. DOVES! White lace! Innocence! No more wine-soaked country weekends in England! Are you buying it?
Photos courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar UK.
I’m with you, Kaiser. I’m calling bullsh@t. I even smirked when I saw your headline.
She reduce a little on cheese but good for her for growing up.Hope to get there soon.
I love her
When I see the amount of whitewashing Sienna Miller has gone through, and compare it to her work, I think about all the supremely talented women who are not conventionally beautiful thin white women who will never even get a foot in the door.
Every time I see Sienna Miller, I think about Lainey’s encounter with her in a Burger King.
OMG what’s the story?
She behaved like an attention-seeking diva.
To me, Sienna will always be topless, flaunting her affair with a married man with 4 kids (and yes I know Getty was just as culpable as she was).
I saw her and Tom in bar in Primrose Hill, at first I didn’t recognise her (she’s looks very different without all the makeup) but she was very much quite loud and was always looking around to see if anyone was looking at her.
Personally, I think though she’s settled down she still has issues. There were pics of her and Sturridge at Wimbledon a few yrs ago, and she was behaving like an attention-seeking idiot.
Just Googled that story. What an attention seeker (both she and Mummy).
Lainey made a good point about her that if you look at the actresses in her age group, the “wife” role is probably about the best she’s going to do in films. Too much strong competition and she never managed that “Wow!” role when starting out. She might find something juicy on TV but even their competition is fierce!!
tbf, television is the the only medium with good roles for female actors and/or poc.
i don’t care for her as a person, but i love everything she wears. which btw is not down to her but to her stylist, so i guess i actually love her stylist.
She’s also learned to keep her sh!t tight, as for growing up she had to. Her behaviour ruined her career, something she seems bitter about. She keeps blaming the press but it was all her own doing – the pap trolling, the affairs etc..
She’s a decent actress but has always been cast as the ‘girlfriend/mistress/wife’. She’s not lead material – I saw Factory Girl and she struggled to carry that movie, althou her performance was ok. She tends to give better performances as a supporting character.
To play devil’s advocate- if she has really, truly changed, then wouldn’t it be a bit unfair on her to constantly drag up her wilder days in interviews? She does seem to keep herself largely to herself these days. As messy and attention seeking as she was, I can’t recall any recent tabloid or anecdotal evidence that would suggest that her life change isn’t genuine.
Oh whoops, missed the part where she was the one who brought it up :p I still think people should be allowed the chance to grow, and she doesn’t really seem to be blaming anyone than herself.
I think her life change was genuine but the damage to her rep was so bad that the roles dried up – she didn’t work for a long time and had to go back to modelling. She has slowly and quietly been rebuilding her career but she will never have the career like her contemporaries because a) the bad rep she’s still trying to repair and b) she’s not that talented an actress, she’s not bad but not great – given the right script etc.. she can give a decent performance. She’s never stood out from the crowd hence why all the tabloid baiting she and her then PR team did.
I wouldn’t mind a wine-soaked weekend in the English countryside right about now….
She is so pretty. I love her style too
I always find it kind of humorous when rich white girls call themselves “rebellious”. What are you rebelling from? She was living a super posh life and pretty much got everything handed to her. Please.
Eh…I don’t think privilege or race is a factor when it comes to rebelling. Maybe she grew up with a lot of rules and restrictions, that right there is a recipe for rebelliousness. Now, usually that’s reserved for the teen years not someone in their 20’s, but who knows? Everyone’s circumstances are different.
I agree smCollins. Lots of people have existential angst that causes them to lash out when they are young; I think an easy life and lack of any pressing issues to brace against can actually cause this.
Rebelling can be anything – for example, going wild when you have a really strict upbringing or becoming a control freak if you lived in chaos. It’s just reacting to something one feels is constraining. It doesn’t have anything to do with race.
A lot of celebs are doing no drama parenting. Liev and Naomi broke up last year. He said in an interview, when asked, that he would always love her, and she him, as they have children together. A few weeks ago she was in California. He went to an afternoon party with their son. She came separately with their dog. He was at the Oscars after party supposelly with a friend. But the next day or day before Naomi was leaving to fly out, and in front of his house Liev and Naomi gave each other a very deep, loving hug. That woman he/they are friends with was standing there.
But I think more celebs than we realize move into co-parenting in a kind, respectful, we’re-still-family way.
Forgive me, but how on earth do you know such intimate details of their lives? Seems like the only way someone could know is if they choose to make their “long loving hugs” public or staged them for a pap, which is kinda dodgy.
She’s a beautiful woman and a great actress. She’s done a solid job in a number of movies, none of which, unfortunately, was a real hit to help her break through. She’s seen as a party girl from an upper class with a string of supporting roles as a hobby. I doubt it’s going to change (esp considering she’s entering her late 30s) unless she’s lucky to get a strong part on a popular tv show.
Pretty much – she had the talent (people have made it with a LOT less) but just hasn’t had the one breakout hit, and I doubt she’ll ever make it to leading lady status now, at least not in Hollywood (because ageist).
As for her personal life…. it wouldn’t have mattered how messy it was with the affairs and all if she’d only had a hit project. I mean, Kristen Stewart did much the same thing and unlike Sienna, sounds completely unrepentant and you know what? Her career is fine. But that’s because of Twilight. Sienna hasn’t got that leeway.
I don’t care for her as a person but even I have to admit, of all the rich white girls the UK magazines have tried to shove in our faces as the next ‘style icon’ in the last 15 years, Sienna and Alexa Chung are the only ones who actually had a somewhat distinctive and widely-copied style.
She’s a better actress than she gets credit for, but she fucked up in her late twenties and even that might have been salvageable if the talent in her age group wasn’t so strong, competition-wise. I mean, if you had to choose between Sienna Miller and Jessica Chastain/Kirsten Dunst/Felicity Jones/Emily Blunt/Keira Knightley for a role, who would you rather go for?
Agree! I was reading the comments, thinking how down everyone was on her but your bit about choosing her over the list of others? I have never been excited to see a film because Sienna Miller was in it. I do like her but I maybe liked her better when she was still a fuck up. More entertaining for sure!
I love her styling and find her really beautiful. She’s a great actress too. And people do grow up and learn from their mistakes.
I think she makes a fantastic clotheshorse, and I do think it’s unfair to hold the affair from 10 years ago against her, when she’s gone on the record to say she didn’t have the best moral compass back then. Meanwhile no one even brings up Kristen Stewart’s far more recent affair with a married man anymore, when there’s basically no difference between the two situations other than Kstew was in a popular franchise and Sienna was not.
Yeah, I think she doesn’t get enough credit for her acting. As for her personal life, it’s been years already and everyone has moved on and/or grown.
I could have done without the doves, but other than that I love the pictures.
As for her affair with Getty—why don’t we blame HIM, why do we always blame the woman??? But, the Lainey attention seeking story sickens me so I am torn here.
I was at the NYFF this past October during the The Lost City of Z premier. I happened to be in the lobby as the actors were walking outside for the red carpet and was standing beside a very lovely older woman. As we talked, turns out she was Sienna’s aunt who lives in NYC. She spoke lovingly about Sienna and her daughter and it was obvious that Sienna is a great mom. A lot of women who were a bit wild in their youth (myself included) changed once a child comes into the picture. Sienna made a lot of mistakes in her early days and most likely regrets them now, She has matured and changed a lot over the last few years. As many others have pointed out Kristen Stewart and others like Claire Danes have been given a pass for their youthful indiscretions, so should Sienna.
As for big roles, she was in American Sniper which was huge (ugh!) but again she played the wife so not sure why she would say she doesn’t play “the wife”. But on the bright side for her, she’s getting very nice reviews as “the wife” in this move. Good for her.